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Design and Evaluation of a Smartphone Keyboard for Plains Cree Syllabics

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Design and Evaluation of a Smartphone Keyboard for Plains Cree Syllabics Proceedings of the 1st Joint SLTU and CCURL Workshop (SLTU-CCURL 2020), pages 88–96 Language Resources and Evaluation Conference (LREC 2020), Marseille, 11–16 May 2020 c European Language Resources Association (ELRA), licensed under CC-BY-NC Design and Evaluation of a Smartphone Keyboard for Plains Cree Syllabics Eddie Antonio Santos∗†, Atticus G. Harrigany ∗National Research Council Canada [email protected] yAlberta Language Technology Lab University of Alberta Edmonton, Alberta, Canada {easantos,Atticus.Harrigan}@ualberta.ca Abstract Plains Cree is a less-resourced language in Canada. To promote its usage online, we describe previous keyboard layouts for typing Plains Cree syllabics on smartphones. We describe our own solution whose development was guided by ergonomics research and corpus statistics. We then describe a case study in which three participants used a previous layout and our own, and we collected quantitative and qualitative data. We conclude that, despite observing accuracy improvements in user testing, introducing a brand new paradigm for typing Plains Cree syllabics may not be ideal for the community. Keywords: cree, syllabics, smartphone 1. Introduction family. It is the westernmost language of the Cree lan- guage continuum, and has been historically spoken by the nêhiyawak people in an area spanning present day north and central Alberta, central Saskatchewan, and the eastern edge of British Columbia. As with many Indigenous languages in Canada, the use of Plains Cree was actively suppressed by government and institutional efforts (The Truth and Rec- onciliation Commission of Canada, 2015). Plains Cree is written primarily in two orthographies. The 123 (Cree Syllabics) ᓀᐦᐃᔭᐍᐏᐣ most commonly supported orthography by computers and smartphones is the standard Roman orthography (SRO), Figure 1: The virtual keyboard layout introduced in this pa- an alphabet that borrows the consonants ptkcshmnywrl and per for typing Plains Cree syllabics on iOS and Android vowels êiao from the Latin script (ISO 15924: Latn), and smartphones. denotes long vowels with either macron (ē ī ō ā) or circum- flex (ê î ô â) diacritics. Note that there is no short e vowel. To reclaim an minority language in the digital space, the language must be used and shared online. However, mi- nority language users of new media often resort to a ma- 3. ᒐᐦᑭᐯᐦᐃᑲᓇ: Writing in Syllabics jority language when writing online (Keegan et al., 2015). Syllabics or ᒐᐦᑭᐯᐦᐃᑲᓇ (cahkipêhikana) (ISO 15924: Ca- There is a need for quality mobile support for minority lan- ns) is a writing system created in the 1800s to write the guages (Cassels, 2019), such as Plains Cree. Having a good Swampy Cree language (Stevenson, 1999). Syllabics are mobile keyboard enables the language to be used online, used to write many Canadian Indigenous languages and of- and encourages the language’s use at home and in the class- ten have different conventions language to language. Such room. There is no well-established keyboard layout for languages include Inuktut, Eastern Cree dialects, and Dene Plain Cree syllabics, although there have been plenty of al- languages, among others. Their use for Plains Cree will be ternatives for smartphones (First Peoples’ Cultural Council, the focus of this paper. 2016; van Esch et al., 2019; Houle, 2018; Moshagen et al., The syllabics writing system is similar to an abugida—its 2016). In this paper, we explore the existing keyboard lay- primary graphemes represent a consonant-vowel pair, with outs, describe a few areas of improvement, and propose our the shape of each grapheme indicating the consonant of the own smartphone keyboard layout for writing in Plains Cree pair, and the orientation of the grapheme indicating the syllabics (Figure 1). We describe how we created our layout vowel of the pair. basing its key locations on ergonomics research and corpus For example, the graphemes ᐯ, ᐱ, ᐳ, ᐸ all have the statistics. We then describe a case study wherein we had same shape, which represents a syllable starting with the participants use our keyboard and compared it to an exist- /p/ sound; these graphemes represent the syllables /pe/, /pɪ/, ing solution. We conclude by discussing the preferences we /po/, /pɐ/, respectively. The graphemes ᑲ, ᓴ, ᒐ, ᒪ are all learned from the case study. oriented in the same way (the tips “point” to the southwest) which means they all contain the /ɐ/ vowel; these graphemes 2. nêhiyawêwin: the Cree Language represent the syllables /kɐ/, /sɐ/, /t͡ sɐ/, /mɐ/, respectively. Plains Cree (ISO 639-3: crk) or its endonym, ᓀᐦᐃᔭᐍᐏᐣ Syllables in Plains Cree have the general shape (C)(w)V- (nêhiyawêwin) is a member of the Algonquian language (C)(C), where C is a consonant and V is a vowel, and w is 88 Example 4.1 The FirstVoices Layout Category Elaboration Syllabic IPA SRO V Vowel ᐋ /ɑː/ â wV Syllable with /w/ as ᐚ /wɑː/ wâ onset CV Syllable with con- ᒌ /t͡ siː/ cî sonant onset CwV Syllable with con- ᓎ /nwɑː/ nwâ sonant + /w/ onset final Coda ᐤ /w/ w Table 1: The different syllabic categories used in this paper. Figure 2: The FirstVoices Plains Cree syllabics layout. The ᓀᐦᐃᔭᐍᐏᐣ (Plains Cree) keyboard layout (Figure 2) the /w/ sound1 (Wolfart, 1996). Given that most syllables was created by the First Peoples’ Cultural Council as part of in Plains Cree are predominately CV or CwV, the syllabics their FirstVoices Keyboards app (2016). The FirstVoices writing system is particularly well-suited for writing Plains Keyboards app is a suite of smartphone keyboard layouts Cree. Further, the writing system is thought to be more In- that covers all Indigenous languages in Canada. The tech- digenous and authentic than using the borrowed Latin writ- nology that allows the creation of many keyboard layouts ing system, thus it holds greater cultural value. is Keyman (2020), a keyboard creation engine. Keyman 3.1 Diacritics is embedded within the FirstVoices Keyboards app, and all of the keyboard layouts it provides—including The onset of a syllable, if present, is a consonant, or a conso- ᓀᐦᐃᔭᐍᐏᐣ (Plains Cree)—can be used standalone with the (separate) nant with an intervening /w/ sound. The /w/ sound is written Keyman app. Throughout the rest of this paper, we will re- in syllabics as a dot to the right-side of the (C)V syllabic. fer to this layout as the FirstVoices layout. For example, ᑌ represents the /te/ syllable; ᑘ, with a dot to the right, represents the /twe/ syllable. The FirstVoices layout uses a two page system: the initial Long vowels are denoted by putting a dot on top of a syl- page (Figure 2) displays all V and CV syllabics that have labic; for example, given the short vowels ᐃ (/ɪ/), ᐅ (/o/), the underlying /ɐ/ and /ɪ/ vowel. Below the CV syllabics ᐊ (/ɐ/), adding a dot diacritic on top of these vowels yields are all of the finals, with the exception of ᕽ. Pressing the the long vowels, ᐄ (/iː/) ᐆ (/oː/), and ᐋ (/ɑː/), respectively. key switches to the second page, which displays all V Note: although ᐁ (/e/) is considered to be a long vowel, it and CV syllabics that have the underlying /e/ and /o/ vowel, does not take a diacritic, as there is no short /e/ vowel. as well as keys for ᓬ (/l/), ᕒ (/r/), and ᕽ. To type a syllabic with a long vowel, the typist first types 3.2 Finals the V or CV syllabic with the corresponding short vowel. Codas in Plains Cree, if present, are one or two consonants Then, the typist must press the ̇ key, which has the effect written using syllabics called finals. Finals appear any- of adding a long vowel dot to the previously entered V or where in a word where a consonant cannot be paired with CV syllabic. To type a wV or CwV syllabic, one must first a vowel or an intervening /w/. For example, the word for type the corresponding V or CV syllabic, including long horse, /mɪstɐtɪm/, is written as ᒥᐢᑕᑎᒼ in syllabics. The fi- vowel dot, and then press the ᐧ key; this places a middle nals correspond to /s/ and /m/ phonemes, respectively, and dot after the corresponding syllabic. are the two consonants in the word that are not followed by a This layout has the advantage of having a shallow learning vowel or a /w/ + vowel pair. There are three special finals: ᐦ curve; All V and CV syllabics are one or two presses away. for writing /h/ anywhere in a word; ᐤ for words that end with However, since there are 40 V and CV syllabics, plus 13 fi- /w/; and ᕽ for words that end with /hk/; Every consonant in nals, this keyboard makes the decision to split them in half. Plains Cree has a corresponding final syllabic, though these Notably, syllables with the vowels /ɐ/ or /ɪ/ are more com- are not transparently related to their corresponding CV syl- mon in Plains Cree, so the keyboard made the right choice labic shape. in prioritizing which syllabics are immediately selectable. That said, the keyboard is still cramped; on our test device, 3.3 Categorizing Syllabics most keys on this layout are 5mm wide. In this paper, we define five categories for the Plains Cree The FirstVoices layout produces dubious Unicode charac- syllabics: V, wV, CV, CwV, and final (Table 1). The key- ter output. The Unified Canadian Aboriginal Syllabics boards described in this paper (Sections 4, 5) each have dif- block of Unicode defines unique characters for all V, wV, ferent methods of typing characters in each category. CV, and CwV syllabics and includes finals specifically for use in Western Cree syllabics (The Unicode Consor- 4.
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